Book excerpt: Organizational socialization is the process by which a new employee learns to adapt to an organizational culture. This crucial early period has been shown to have an influence on eventual job satisfaction, commitment, innovation, and cooperation, and ultimately the performance of the organization. After decades of research on organizational socialization, much is now known about this important process. However, some confusion still exists regarding what it means to be socialized. The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Socialization brings comprehensive reviews of the scholarly literature together with perspectives on what is being done in organizations to integrate and support new employees. The first section introduces the principles and practice of employee socialization and provides a history of the field, and the second section focuses on outcomes and antecedents of socialization. The third section on organizational context, systems, and tactics covers an extensive number of topics, including diversity, person-organization fit, and social networks, and special contexts such as socialization into higher-level jobs, and expatriation. The fourth section reviews process, methods, and measurement. The fifth section goes "beyond the organizational newcomer" to examine socialization in special contexts. The sixth section expands on practice-related issues and walks the reader through two case studies, one in an academic setting and another in a corporate setting. The final chapters provide a "best practices" approach, based on the highest quality research, summarize the state of the field, and offer an agenda for future research as well as suggestions for potential research-practice partnerships. Unique and thorough in its approach, The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Socialization is a useful single source of information across the range of research relevant to organizational socialization.